watts_bar on Nostr: The oldest went to public school, but I would’ve sent her to Montessori if I knew ...

The oldest went to public school, but I would’ve sent her to Montessori if I knew better back then. She’s quite a bit older than the younger two. We did practice a lot of Montessori techniques with her at home. Allowing her to do self-directed work became a reward. For example, in our house once a week, we practiced family cleaning day. Her job was to clean the fridge. She could put her headphones on and get lost in the task for hours. It was very soothing for her to focus on a single task. However, if we gave a multifaceted task like clean your room, we would have to pop in all the time and give her direction and she hated it. In order to gain cooperation from her on various things throughout the week it eventually evolved into.” I won’t let you clean the fridge on family cleaning day unless you do the thing I’m asking you to do right now.” Every kid is different and it was a slow observational process on our part as the parents to learn how to direct her focus on things she wouldn’t be resistive to in order to teach her good habits that carried over into adulthood.